a poorly run conference

i attended the open source developers conference this past weekend in taipei. it was perhaps one of the worst run conferences. they had no signs directing people to the building. one of the organizers and i were lost on the academica sinica campus for a 1/2 hour! once there, the people didn't know anything, even the basic, "where is the talk being held?". what i saw was a bunch of people who were supposed to be organizing, sitting around playing games and chatting with each other.

i tried signing up for a lightning (5 min) talk, but the first day, no one knew how to do so. the second day they had a signup sheet, so i signed up. unlike other conferences, they did not have two projectors available. so the first person took 5 minutes alone to get his computer setup. and then spoke for another 6 minutes. i was beginning to feel that at this rate, i'd never be able to give my talk.

but i was able to give my talk finally. the guy on the stage started cracking down on people and cutting them off. and afterwards, 3 engineers from trend micro approached me. i'm hoping that i'll be able to sit down with them and discuss possible collaborations.